[1] In 1942, he succeeded in graduating with honors,[2] but was thereafter deported on a personnel exchange vessel along with his sister Tsurumi Kazuko, Kiyoko Takeda, and Maruyama Masao.

[3] In 1946, Tsurumi started the think tank Shisō no Kagaku Kenkyūkai ("The Science of Thought Research Association") along with seven other people, including three of those who were on board the same deportation vessel with him: Takeda, Maruyama, and his sister Kazuko.

[6] On May 30, he resigned his position at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, in protest against the May 19th Incident, when Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi rammed the new Security Treaty through the National Diet with only members of his own party present, after having had opposition lawmakers physically removed by police.

[6] Distancing himself from hierarchical leftist groups such as the Socialist and Communist parties and labor unions, Tsurumi sought to take advantage of popular outrage at Kishi's anti-democratic actions to foment a new type of "citizen's movement" (shimin undō) that would consist of ordinary citizens, unaffiliated with any preexisting organization, who would "spontaneously" (jihatsuteki ni) organize to take political action.

[8] Although the Voiceless Voices Society played only a small role in the Anpo Protests, it became the model for the much larger Beheiren anti-Vietnam War organization that Tsurumi and his associates helped establish and promote in the second half of the 1960s.